Wednesday in Firenze 20111026

Ok.  It's official.  I've now crashed.  I cannot look at another shop window, rococo whirligig, frescoe, iconic triptych.  Done.  Memory card full.  Puking will commence shortly.  
Can't wait to be home, to see all of you and to sit with plainess (not that you're plain..lesson25-people are the Colour).  I need a meeting, and I rarely  say that.  I wish I knew how to meditate.  I wish I had a wind blowing through my head, and that I had the least bit of  bendy body pretzel abilities so that i could just wring myself out.  Blech.  Home with dirty laundry in 48hrs!   Can't wait.
Xxxx

AMC 416-469-8421
Sent from my iPad

Tuesday in Florence

Tuesday in Firenze 20111025. Uffizi fever today. I knew better, but I ran out of time in Toronto and wasn't able to acquire my online reservation. So this morning I shuffled off early and I stood in line, waiting, shifting from foot to foot, stretching my back, talking to the BC woman and her Japanese husband beside me, for almost two hours. What a reward! It's simply an abundance of riches, as any one piece could occupy my attention for a day. It was definitely a gallery day, cold and rainy. The second floor windowed gallery with all the "hit"s runs a "u", with exhibit rooms off these essentially three long corridors which are lined with sculptures, busts and portraits. Its my visual over-consumption on this trip to blame, as I gloss over the mosaic floors, frescoed and carved ceilings. Just a few more ta-das, and pretty details. Yawn. Not.
I'm struck by how derivative the Florentine aesthetic is in my daily life in Toronto. And as North Americans, we certainly are consuming the eyetalian ethos when we're cooking with olive oil, watching gangster movies, doing the work lunch at the Olive Garden, feeding the kids pasta, swilling at Starbucks, or picking tiles for our bathroom renovation. I see Florence in ironwork, upholstery, fabric, gardens, color palettes, stonework, linens, purses, shoes. Now I would say that I see more Florence than France in the living design of my daily life.
I'm not a Euro wannabe living in my urban flat, making those endlessly annoying comparisons to how real life should be lived, poo-poohing the acquisition of new washing machines, and scoffing the NFL. My grandparents photographed new factories and made home movies of cars on brand new roads. The wouldn't have known the difference between a croissant and a biscotti, and they liked their coffee percolated. But even their 1950s glass swan table ornament was derivative of Italian glassworks. I saw them, albeit far better designed and executed, in Murano. I just see the wisps and curls of an Italian sensibility in so much of our North American living experience, in "hugging" and cheek air kissing (nobody hugged outside family, and then barely there, before 1967!). Everybody used to shake hands, the French included! Dark sunglasses, movie stars, loafers, disco, wedding favours, suntans (I know it was coco, but she was probably with an Italian). I have this great Italian cookbook, written by a thoroughly arrogant Italian chef, who put forward the premise in every subject introduction that Italian cooking/methodology/ingredients ALWAYS preceded and exceeded any French efforts or claims. Hhmmmmmm.
So, the Uffizi, simply glorious. Round, pink, pouting, expanses of silky blushed skin and long necks, uplifting, ethereal, mythological. Even scenes of rape and pillage looked lush.
I window shopped the gold bridge for Clive, and ran into a series of old Italian guys intently discussing something with each other, only notable because they were all dressed the same and wagging their finger. I walked on to the Pitti palace. On the way back I saw another paper marbler, who was demonstrating. I had a nice talk with him. The paper stores keep catching me, and my take home wish list besides sewing again, is to marble paper and make books. More walking, rain, cappuccino, walking, looking into tiny shop windows alluringly arranged, a zuppa verdura, a gelato, people watching, more walking, another cappuccino, a nap in there somewhere. I'm coming to the end of my trip, thinking more about life ever after, wanting to see my peeps, check listing projects. Then a soft color, the profile of a building and trees on a hill, reflective Arno waters, a cappuccino, a stroll...

A cold and gray Monday in Firenze 20111024

Monday Firenze 20111024. Dear Lynn, Florence is where all the good hand bags are born, convene, lounge, hang out on glass shelves, and occasionally move to faraway lands with kind and adoring friends. Bags are us, every kind of leather bag you can imagine, all for the very expensive buying. This is definitely not the Coach retail outlet in Vegas.
I started the day at Il Duomo, or the St Mary of pretty little flowers church. An extravagant multilayer stacked Viennese torte of marble exterior, and a stern interior of mosaic and frescoes that were Italian liturgical understatement. It was cool and dim, and I could sit quietly. Buddah/yoga lady sat beside me in classic meditation pose, thumb and forefinger closed to a circle. Where St. Mark's was a joyful hallelujah, this space was contemplative. Not hugely busy, I was able to take my time exploring. Further down the road, I came to a small museum, palazzo Davanzati, what had once been a wealthy person's house had become a poor house and rescued in the early 20th century by basically an art restorer. It was an interesting space to be in, heavy square and maybe five large stories high, inner courtyard, walls decorated with painted motifs, carved ceilings, and a dumb waiter/interior pulley system. I saw the oldest bridge over the Arno, that the occupying German commander had been convinced to not destroy as allied troops advanced on the city. I walked through the collonade. I have now officially retail overloaded. Today I saw the shop windows of more luxury designer retailer than I have ever seen in one place. I get it. Florence isn't just art, it's shopping! I went into Hermes to price a cashmere/silk pashmina, arbre de vie, still less expensive here than in Toronto. Hmmmmm, I really have to think about that one. Stephanie, i wish i was experiencing it through your sensibilities. I can barely do thirty minutes in a thrift shop, and after hours of beautiful after beautiful I want an iced washcloth over my eyes. Tooooo much. It's not entirely wasted on me, because I'm clearer on my own aesthetic, and ready to move from stretchy pants to something a little more expressive.
This is why I don't think I'm a great traveller. I window shop the lifestyle and choices, and want to bring it home. I think real travellers let it wash over them (thank you ali), and live in the moment. Almost twenty years ago I was in the south of France, and my overwhelming response to that trip was to live better, to drink the fresh squeezed orange juice at my own table set with pretty flowers, rather than sacrificing years of good living for two weeks of vacation travel. When I got back I moved to the apartment of my dreams in the beaches, stopped drinking and living an Epicurean fantasy in my head when I was coming home alone to dry crackers and an empty fridge. This trip is doing the same thing, maybe less aesthetically and more internally. The hoarding is over. The living can no longer be a window pane away. It's breaking my heart. It has to be as solid and real as I can manage.

Sunday traveling from Venizia to Firenze 20111023

20111023 Sunday, traveling from Venice to Firenze. Slow filler day, waiting for a train, waiting for a seat, a 2 hour train ride, waiting for a taxi, sitting on Ponte s. Trinita, gawking in Feragamo windows, a toodledo around the blocks and a trattoria meal. Bells. CNN. Sleep.
Between saturday and Sunday I must have seen ten thousand faces. The tourists were pouring into Venice on Saturday, after days of wind and rain. At one point I could look down the pier between the three vaparetto stops on San Marco, and I had that swishy human stream feeling i get when I see television coverage on Mecca. Then the Doges palace was swimming with portraiture; saints, kings, queens, princes, pillars of society, the shoemakers guild, popes, sinners writhing in hell, cherubs on the ceiling, red cherubs, blue cherubs. I had bad timing, aggressively early, something like what my mother would do, and I sat in the train station and the cafe at ferrovia for a long time. People people people, with bags, with children, with baggage, happy, stern, coupled, alone, tourists gone italatroppo, Italians gone jersey shore, Germans, Brits. When i got to Firenze I found the official taxi line. Young friendly guy with a meter, just how I like them. He drove for blocks and blocks on a sunday best shoulder to shoulder full of people pedestrian mall to get to the hotel. I had images of being bashed like charles and camilla, but this tax just nudged them out of the way. The humanity was overwhelming, people shopping and eating, shopping, stuff stuff stuff, and people consuming it all.
I get worn out by going to a mall in Scarborough, and need a week to recover from people overload. When I came home from a whole sheeting week of a hundred yes/nos a day, I could go the mattress for a weekend without talking to one person. I don't know if my internal logic system is trying to fill in the blanks on all these people, but I'd want to know how and why they lived, who they loved, what they ate for breakfast, their shame and joy, blah blah blech. Instead they're flash cards being shuffled in my brain. I'm tired now. I must rest.

Saturday in Venice. 20111022

20101022 Saturday in Venice Not to get too cocky, but i can get around without a map in SanMarco. Right at the moon, left at the green bra, bear to the left past the "cleaning in progress", quick right into the closet, left around the dead end electrical box, over the bridge, I see a slash of white through the canyon...La FENICE! Beside being a splotchy red mess, and unable to walk for hours a a time, all is good. I was attacked by one lone mosquito on my first night here. You know, that buzz in your ear being swatted away, drifting off, she's back, ferocious swatting now, more buzz, all the lights on, climbing over the dresser to smash bits of wispy black into that padded wall, finally silence, dark, drifting, BUZzZZZZZbuzz.... I have about ten bites on my face; cheeks, bridge of nose, forehead, and a nice puffy red eyelid. A natural conversation stopper.
Today I was at the palace of the Doges early to beat any lines. It was cold clear and crisp. I hobbled my little route knowledgeably and as swiftly as i could, puffy eyes to the ground, and swept the corner round to the quay as a cruise ship was coming in. Towering over the flotilla of gondolas, the scale is immense. The wind was up, the chop was on, the crowds were already starting. Doges was palatial, is, was, a palace. Room after room of gilded ceilings, carvings, sculptures, paintings on very inch of surface, balconies and verandas, courtyards. Not as moving as the basilica, commerce and law rarely are, but impressive in it's magnitude. I sat in a couple of the rooms, and contemplated some of the larger pieces. The tour groups were starting to crowd me, so I maybe left sooner than I would have expected to. Off to the glass making island of Murano. In hyper shopper form, I bought a glass lampshade, had it packed, and brought it to the post office in my first twenty minutes on the island. I have no idea if I'll actually get it, or even receive it in one piece. The insurance and shipping from the store would have made the price prohibitive, and I'm sensing a racket. I wish i had taken a picture of it, so I could at least have that as a memory for posterity. Oh well, if it arrives in bits, maybe Marilyn could show me how to do mosaics.... I wandered into shops, bought a few momentos, went to the glass museum, had lunch. It was my favorite weather, sunny, windy and cool. Not many people. The vaparetto ride also did the whole outside turn of Venice, past a more industrial area and neighborhoods you could imagine the plainer people lived. Italy, plain? A place where tall thin, spa-ed, gilded and coiffed individuals, wearing ten of thousands of euros on their bodies did not live.
Back to the city, I then went to the accadmie, a museum of mostly medieval and renaissance paintings so lustrous that I wanted to cry. This was another space I could visit every day for a year to meditate on one piece a a time.
Now because I know some of the back doors, I was able to walk fr. The accademie back to la FENICE. I stopped in palazzo piazza pissina (I get all those things mixed up) San stefano, and took a table in the late afternoon sun at a cafe to just enjoy the space and watch the people. A pear vanilla gelato chocolate sauce extravagance in front of me. Happy. Quick hop into "another" paper marbler. Hotel. Nap. Waken. Terrace. Breath. Church Bells. CNN.

Friday in Venice. 20111021

20111021 Friday Venice. Alone during the day I can blend in, at night not so much. I mean I guess i could creep out and stand around in a dark corner and startle. Not drinking and sitting in a bar making "friends" has a little less appeal. Knitting in a tea room, sure. Knitting in night culture, blech. So i write you instead, parked on my bed in front of BBC.

LA FENICE is not THE MAJESTIC. It's an "artist" hotel, and certainly cast and crew from FIGARO have been trilling the lounge. My room is on the top floor, a double with a huge terrace, overlooking a small canal. I hear the singing gondoliers as they pass through, and I'm woken by the church bells ringing first mass. The room is decorated in a Venetian style, upholstered walls of patterned gold jacquard fabric, a pitched white stucco ceiling with the dark beams exposed, and a large hanging Venetian glass lamp fixture. Not a marbled bathroom, it does have a window out onto what looks like an abandoned square/alley of matted grasses that none of the surrounding billings have access to. The facilities are clean and totally serviceable. In keeping with the "art" theme, there is an eclectic arrangement of art on every hallway wall and in this room too; mostly dusty fading mixed media jarring pieces that clearly were done between 1970 and 1985. There is the occasional period print, but overall the impression is of eclectic throw up. The hallways are narrow, and because the hotel is a warren of buildings, like Venice, it's massively confusing to maneuver. Every door is covered in a full length print of Klimt's THE KISS, the blinking neon sign pointing to dirty business being done here. Some false start doorways are mirrored. Its a right left step up step down Escheresque print to get to the elevator. The main floor rooms are tired, and I knew not to hold any hopes about breakfast after THEMAJESTIC. And I was right. But it is behind the opera house, a quiet square, 10 minutes (if you know the way) to san Marco. I would rather stay here than the Venetian equivalent of Best Western, but I'd really have loved to stay at the Danieli (?) hotel where they shot THE TOURSIST with Depp/Jolie!
Today I had a long and satisfying drink that slated visual and intellectual thirsts. I got into St marks basilica shortly after it opened. I could go there every day for a month, for a year, and just marvel over one of it's many treasures for hours, one at a time. I stayed a long time, going to the treasure room, and behind the altar. I wished Marilyn had been there with me to observe the vastness and quality of the mosaics. I can't even describe it big enough. Gold, glowing, blue, floral, animals, saints, holy, carved, lustrous, softened in age, weight, expanse, universality, flickering, hushed, light, domed, pillared, galleried, mystic, humming. I spent at least an hour just looking at one corner of the floor, where the tile mosaics were more complex and beautiful than anything I had ever seen or imagined could exist before. Its good and so unexpected to fall in love in middle age, making it all the more precious. I've just never seen anything more beautiful. It must be my inner unrequited RC longings. I've been in many churches in France, but generally speaking they must have been stripped during the revolution. My impression was always cold stone and stillness, and sometimes beautiful stained glass in the larger centres. I have a lot to think about.
Then I hung out the back of the water bus for entire return grand canal route, slow way down and fast back. Another "wow!this place really exists" experience. I saw all the galleries I would want to go into if I had a month including the Peggy Guggenheim collection. Because I had read some of that heavy guide book, I was able to recognize some of the notable buildings including the Turkish warehouse. How this city has existed on an edge of a sea, for over seven hundred years, and not crumble or dissolve back into the swamp, sustain a higher order of living, culture, thought, is amazing to me. And in spite of the mantle of tourism, one can still feel the city it was struggles to remain. I'm reminded of the american shaker woman "I'm not a chair". It must be painful for any remaining Venetians "I'm not a museum".
Then a very late and leisurely lunch. I treated myself to a good meal; warm seafood salad, mixed greens, a Venetian preparation of calves liver with polenta, and a ricotta cake. Cappucino. Watch the tourists. Shuffle back to the hotel on aching legs (because favoring a sprain now everything hurts). Nap.

Thursday in Venice. 20111020

20111020 Thursday. Venice. Heavy rain, hard cold and wind. My weather. And off I went, umbrella in hand, thankful for the turtleneck shirt and wool hat and socks I packed in that ever too heavy suitcase. I walked the San Marco paroisse (?) for a couple of hours in the morning and disproved the shopping theory. It is possible to spend a lot of money on light items. It's called jewellery. The previous night when i had wandered in circles looking for the hotel, I noted some interesting shops. After the big box and internet shopping lifestyle, it's a bit startling to wander into a shop that specializes in magnifying glass handles. You wonder how they make a living. I found a shop that sold hand marbled papers, and that was my rhapsody.
I'm a bad Christmas shopper because the ratio of gifts to purchases for moi is a bit skewed. Venice is no exception. My grandmother travelled in Italy with a theatre troupe in the 1960s. She brought us back dresses, blue tiered birthday cake with a ribboned waist for Lynn and a slimming taupe a-line for me (what waist). She also gave me a gift of a silver charm bracelet from Rome which I still have, and a small cameo ring which i lost in a high school washroom in grade seven after washing my hands (to Susan Blampied I believe, a foul frizzy red-haired toughie from the other side of decarie). So that's the long way round to justify buying a cameo ring, and coral drop earrings which Meme had also given me years later (and I lost in some head swinging frenzy on dance floor, pre khaleegy, in university). Redemption. And there were a couple of trinkets acquired for friends too. ;)
I did head to the big palazzo, but the wind gusts and rain were stretching on foul for even me. So I stayed on the back streets. Lunch was a small restaurant, a prix fixe menu, chosen mostly because of rain saturation and general drippieness. Warm, dry, hot food. Spaghetti vongole, veal marsala, mixed greens, cappucino. Good. One of the boat guys came in for lunch. He was wearing a pair of navy blue farmer john bibbed and zippered gortex overalls. A bowl of "red", a glass of wine, an espresso, banter with the proprietor. Fine skinned and elegant features, a coiffed head of gray, eyeglasses of the latest vintage, he looked more professorial than proletarian. A Yankee seaman would be broad and ruddy, and his cologne would hint more at diesel than giannfranco ferre. Italy.
The rain had stopped by the afternoon, but the wind was still big, so I stayed inland, and ventured in the other direction. A square, an art gallery (francis bacon), a church, another square, academia bridge over the main canal, a vaparetto. A cappuccino in there somewhere. By now my ankle was throbbing, and I was deep cold and damp. Back to the hotel. Naaaaapppppppp.
The opera starts early. I was in an obstructed view seat, or what I would have imagined in another time to have been chaperone seating. Now this was a theatre, a six tiered birthday cake of gilded flourishes and red velvet, angels, cherubs, trompe l'oeil, chandeliers, on every surface everywhere. There wasn't a blank space for your eye to rest on. I was in a second tier box beside the stage, and it was exactly as I imagined, an arched hallway with little doors running the curve. A stern woman usher wearing a precise suit trots you to your box and opens it with a key (and locks you in, not).
Il Figaro is a Mozart opera, a farce unlike the usual tragedy, and a relatively early opera for the genre, with a harpsichord and speaky-singy bits. I thought I would bail at intermission, but even just hearing the music was lovely. So I stayed all three hours, in the dark, at the back of the box, keeping the couple in front of me from tumbling onto the floor with passionate abandon. Ha, bet they loved me!
Cold wet and windy night. Thank g&d i knew where i was, and with full confidence shuffled off quickly in a dark direction. Cafe counter, bought a sandwich and a marmalade cookie, back to my room, watched ghadafi news on CNN. Sleep.

Wednesday, leaving Rome & arriving in Venice 20111019

Wednesday 20111019. Spectacular magical day. Foot was better. I left Rome for Venice, and I didn't have any surprises at the checkout. The taxi driver took me to this gleaming Roma Termini which didn't look like anything I had seen when I arrived. I think I inadvertently went out the back door when I arrived. Of course the goofs are out back on smoke break looking for a hustle (I had vaguely wondered why the main terminal looked so rough). But this nice man's meter said nine euros, and I gave him fifteen just out of ragged relief. Though I did jettison some extra clothing to lighten the load a bit (of course I packed too much), the bag was still heavy and barely manageable. After I saw a group of hobbling elderly American tourists, many with canes, heaving their bags onto the train I wasn't about to moan about anything. One of them even called me kid. I think my dad was the last person to ever call me kid. It made me warm to them. I sat with a honeymooning Indian couple from Dubai, and we had a good conversation about how we self-identified as immigrants and what defined home. I took out my knitting, and I became the oddity of the train car, except to the wistful knitters who had left their sticks at home. The Indians were particularly perplexed and took a lot of pictures of me. Train ride was relatively quick, and included lots of tunnels. It went from mostly mountainous to flat plains. This was a high speed train, so your best view was deep background because you couldn't hold any foreground images. So it was often just easier to knit and talk. I had no concept of our arrival time, and at one point I looked up and I could see huge tall and heavy industry cranes, like commercial ship cranes. And then the sea was right there. Even on a spitty gray day, i felt the aqua blues from the horizon to the sea.
I exited the train station, and I was looking at Venice across an eight lane water highway, like it just popped the picture frame. It had a diesel sea smell and a clanking industrious sound. The boats were moving back and forth in a big chop, just churning through it. It was a take your breath moment away, even with all the tourists and chaos on the wharf.
I got on a vaparetto (water bus), trying not to maim innocent appendages with my huge bag (yup I really did pack too much). The French tourists I sat beside gave me a crash course on vaparetto navigation, and the upsidedowness right left south north of the line 1 & 2. I basically got that if you stayed on long enough, you'd be circling back.

At San Marco square where I disembarked, another I can't breath moment: a massive square overlapping worn, gilded, ornate, renaissance (?) and 19th century; gondolas swaying; and palaces on magic islands rising from the mist offshore. Surreally, a massive cruise ship that seemed about 30stories high was leaving port, and it just moved quietly out to sea like a whale slipping through a school of fish. It was raining lightly, which made all the colours glow, the neon umbrellas, the blue and gold of the St Mark's lion, the shiny ebony and red velvets/leathers of the gondolas.
I tore the wee district map out of my tour book, and cursed my lack of reading glasses. I had a sense of how to get to the hotel. When I was out of the square, I just kept consulting the map, checking at every navigation point, my thumb pressed firmly into into my last confirmed position. Ugh. Steps and bridges with a huge bag. My ankle doesn't do the "down" stairs terribly well, and I just didn't want to double back needlessly. It's hard to believe they map narrow dark closets, because that's what it felt like I was walking through sometime, unlit, barely shoulder wide, stone canyons. Yes I was relieved when I got to the hotel, and when the deskclerk mapped out the easiest fastest way back to San Marco, that wasn't my route!

This was a city I wanted out into right away. This hotel is next door to La FENICE, so i immediately went to their box-office and got a ticket to tomorrow night's performance of Il Figaro, which I've already seen a couple of times. Score! Then I crossed the little square and went into what effectively must have been a small chapel, dark worn stone, wood doors painted sixty times over barely on their hinges. It reeked of mourning fevered deaths. It was being used as an exhibition space for one piece. Twenty plus feet high, they had made a mosaic of a Russian Orthodox icon (long face deep dark eyes bearded and crowned) with high gloss Ukrainian hand painted Easter eggs. The only light in the chapel was on this piece, and a soundtrack played this combination of Russian liturgical music of bass voices interspersed with muttering (or prayer or curses or incantations). It was stunning, and all the better because it was exhibited in a way that made you feel you had it to yourself.
I continued onto St Marks square, just looking into shop windows at leather goods, an exhibition of manual typewriters at Olivetti's, shops that displayed exclusively a rainbow of leather gloves or pastel cashmeres or scarves or murano glass, and the ubiquitous Venetian masks in leather, glass, hand painted, bejeweled, stiff with lace and feathers. When I got to the square I took another one of those deep breath slow and quiet 180 degree turns, just taking it in; pigeons, students, the gold lion against a blue half circle, the dome, the marble, the arched galleria, this tower, that spire, that person with a gelato in a tiny perfect cone. I sat at a table in the covered galleria, because it was really raining now, cold, and had a little bite listening to a four person ensemble that played something that sounded like waltzy-tango music to me. It was insanely expensive, but I didn't care. I was wrapped in my shawl, warm and dry, drinking another cappuccino, free of the crap that's been rattling around in my head of late. Happy? Yup.
A continued stroll around the covered galleria, more shop windows, ruing my already heavy suitcase that would definitely inhibit shopping opportunities, out to the ocean side again. A gelato. Ahhhhhh. Light was fading. It was time to turn back. I decided to try the concierge's route back. And I got hopelessly lost. Maybe one hour lost in all. I felt the panic rising when I thought I saw a landmark I recognized, but now it was another bridge, another Venetian mask store. All those blank faces looking at you. Than g@d I don't suffer hallucinations (much). The gondola revellers singing Beatles songs faded, the alleys were more sinister and narrower, the light was almost gone, and even shops were starting to close. I was aloner and aloner, dead ending on canals, unable to make any sense of my stupid little map. I laughed to myself when I heard another couple obviously experiencing the same distress. She was scared and starting to go shrill, and he was trying to calm her down with logic in a quiet sure tone. If that had been me and Clive, I would have definitely been the one to take it up a register, and start talking fast and high, of course blaming him. So I broke down and asked for help. Two shopkeepers later, pointing out the general direction I was back. Marvelous! Nice light dinner, warm bath, falling asleep to music warbling from outside, rain. Perfect day.

Tuesday in Roma 20111018

Tuesday 20111018. I walked to the Trevi fountain this morning, which was all the good news I needed today.
My waking was muddled. I'm still upended by the time change, and drinking cappuccinos and espressos at will without caffeine content concern, waking for hours to stare at the ceiling in the middle of the night and fret. Last night I had dreams of Venetian fabrics, not that I know what those are. They were textured silks, brocades and velvets, with gold and silver nubby threads woven through. They were hanging and draped over dark polished wood furniture in a maze of dripping deep colours, in a room where the light bounced low and golden off rows of tall narrow crackled burnished Venetian mirrors, and sparkled off the massive glass pendant breakfast room chandelier. I really tried to stay there as long as possible, and my first thought in wakefulness was ohfuckohfuckohfuck the stupid ankle. Testing my senses, my feet and legs were warm and supple. Everything seemed to be moving, and there appeared to be more range of motion in my ankle. Up and over the side of the bed, et voila, liftoff to the can. For the first time in two days I could stand on both feet.
No mean maitre d' at breakfast hissing me off (or so I imagined), just the pretty tall kind and thin young thing that told me to spend the rest of my vacation at a spa yesterday, instead of going home. I suspect that "spa-time" is an easy and accessible solution in her life. I sat down in one of their cushioned taupe velvet armchairs, and had a slow breakfast, internally giddy and grateful that my worst fretting was left in a dark after midnight space.
They put out a spectacular buffet for breakfast; bright yellow-orange softly scrambled eggs, sausages, cold cuts, cereals, cheeses, fruit salad in a big glass globe, teeny little crystal sugar encrusted pastries, braised mushrooms and tomatoes, and thick Italian bacon (one piece is enough). I will miss this breakfast buffet! My first day I ordered a cafe latte, which is "just" strong coffee with warm milk. I now know i want the cappuccino for breakfast; dark and smoky without bitterness, capped by a sugar encrusted foam that I can scoop up as dessert when I'm finished.
And then i just sit and watch people. Travelling alone, you notice quickly that pods of people turn to each other, and a person standing or sitting beside them is context only. Jus' a piece of the furniture ma'am. I am never bored in my observations of the people that are around me. I like to think I'm not cruel or judgemental, just quietly catching the conversations and guessing a the subtext, noting what I like about what they're wearing or how they conduct themselves, and figuring out the story. At home I read the obits every day for life stories, to get some gratitude, perspective and have a cry. Here I look at people.
I've had some major bad thoughts since I've arrived, hours and hours of them actually. The inner dialogue has been hideous, and compounded by my guilt that all this should be fun and la-di-da. I have spectacular and courageous friends, who I could never envision shrinking in such a fabulous place, who would pshaw off my self doubt before flinging themselves in the Trevi fountain for fun dressed in their expensive designer frock emerging to applause and kisses from an Italian mamma's boy or girl lover. But S wrote me something that put everything a bit more right. I'm on a luxury silent retreat, with only myself for company, and without all the diversions of home. Damn right my head's a bad place. Just needed a reminder I guess (and yes, I know what I have to do).
So. I went for a walk. Carefully. In morning rush hour traffic, with hurtling workers busy busy busy and trippy (literally) tourists. Past gypsy beggars with babies limp in their arms, or seated on the narrowest part of the sidewalk that the only manner past was almost over them or timing a risk into oncoming traffic. I stepped out of the fray once and went into a fashion house fabric store, and gasped at the prices. Down a narrow ruelle, and I turned a corner to a humid whoosh that was the Trevi fountain. Hooray, mission statement first objective "fountain" achieved!
These are a lot of words and minutiae to describe inches, and probably most interesting to me. I'm sorry. You can stop reading now. But I'm just going to carry on. Never mind me.
It's a spectacular fountain, but it's a fountain. I'm not particularly enamoured of standing around a fountain for a couple of hours watching it. I did my alone traveller stealth thing, backed up to a fence, put my hands on my hips, arched my back and opened my chest for a full breath of ionized air and just watched for awhile. Lots of recreating the backward coin toss for photo ops, hands out-stretched back to Neptune, crooked little smiles. The world was at the fountain, bubbling along right beside it.
I'm a bad tourist. I'm not a great shopper or haggler. Ok, i did go back to the fabric store and bought my commemorative piece of exquisite italian fabric, paying more for 2.5metres of fabric than...never mind. That was it, my one retail shopping experience this trip. Really, I just want to sit outside, warmly covered, and drink coffee, sneak in some knitting, and breath. Not terribly exciting, and what I've mostly done for the past two days, except for parking on an ice pack, is sleeping and checking return airfares.
I was at two outdoor venues today; a cafe on the palazzo at the end of the street, and enjoying a late lunch buffet on the hotel's terrace. I'm really sorry I only discovered that lunch on my last day here. Like breakfast, it was marvellous and varied. In Canada we're stingy with the bufalo mozzarella. First thing I saw on plates being ferried to tables were one big white shiny wobbly globe of glistening cheese per patron, and that included the chichi thin little things. We would take one of those cheeses and make sixteen servings at home. Now that's luxe!
There were seafood salads, small dice cooked cold vegetable salads, curries (there was an India conference going on at the hotel), breaded and fried eggplant, deep-fried and battered cauliflower, an egg and zucchini frittata, buttered and parsleyed rice, couscous, a red sauced pasta that really illustrated once and for all "al dente", desserts small and perfect like pistachio crusted chocolate chip ricotta cannolis and demitasse dark chocolate and coffee mousses. The air was cool, the sun was warm. I was wrapped in an afghan/paisley pashmina, wearing my privacy visors (big and black sunglasses), and i didn't feel like a complete peasant. The clientele were mostly ministry employees from the government building across the street, tailored dark suits, cologned and tanned. Except for the big Russian guy behind me, guffawing about grappa with the waiters, hoarking coughing and blowing his nose, loudly, younger pale wispy little woman in tow.
Then I went back to my room for deep sleep, without Venetian textiles unfortunately, and woke up to knit read and write.
My time in Rome is effectively over. I didn't get to go on my Pristine Cistine tour this morning at 7am. I didn't see the colosseum or the pantheon, or experience any of that eternity stuff. I really didn't do much of anything, at least not what i expected i would be doing. I was back and forth with air Canada to cancel reschedule and reschedule again my departure. I was ripped off, my head was fucked up and so was my foot. I did enjoy a fabulous hotel and will now fantasize about a life in a splendid hotel whenever the dust bunnies start blowing too large through my house and I just want to hole up somewhere. I did not throw a coin into the fountain this morning because I thought it was a lame and forlorn thing to do. Apparently this means my return to Rome isn't guaranteed. Imagine me shrugging, both hands and eyebrows gesticulating a "whatever". It doesn't end there. I know that you never know what something is good for until you have a couple of miles between you and it. I wait to see what that is.

Monday in Rome 20111017

20111017. The last 24hours have been ugly, filled with fear, self doubt and pain. My twisted ankle morphed into a sprain, then a break, then a catastrophe, then an opportunity for self-loathing, followed by some crisis management, back to a sprain, ending with two hours of cappuccinos and people watching in the cafe down the street. I've iced it, elevated it, massaged it, bathed it in the holy grail of marble surround bath tubs so narrow i thought i was going to compound steaming heat with a drowning, and invoked every healing incantation I know (mostly of the fuckfuckfuck variety). The inner dialogue was bad as it gets in spite of the impeccable room service and penguin suits. I had to face the fact that i couldn't walk, and even if my ankle wasn't broken, i'd be limping for at least a week. I'm a tourist. We walk. We look, and we walk some more. If i were at a resort, I'd have no problem forgoing the shuffleboard and lounging on a deck with a faux margarita for the holiday. But this is Italy. You have to walk. A lot. I didn't think Holidays were supposed to be marathons. Ok, maybe for some people, but I'm definitely looking for the easier softer way. I can find someone to pay me for stamina, timeliness and accuracy. I don't need to do that on my time. So i had to see whether I could change my ticket and return home earlier, and while the sane part of me thought it reasonable to make that decision tomorrow, Air Canada had two seats remaining in the next four days that would only cost $90 to change. If I didn't rebook, I risked having to get back for a lot more money and a connection through Heathrow that I knew couldn't manage in my current state. A couple of hours ago, seated in my street side cafe, making fashion critiques to myself of passersby, my ankle finally stopped feeling like it was getting worse. Did I catch a bit of Italian, a bit of a shrug, a it's not so bad sit down and have a cappuccino kind feeling? Maybe. So now I don't know if I'm staying or going, but I am probably in a better frame of mind to make a balanced decision. Tomorrow. After I throw a coin in the Trevi fountain to guarantee my return.

Sunday in Rome. Day 1. 20111016.

Sunday 20111016. Slept like a stone, in one position. I think a sliver of light and the increased volume of city traffic and motobikes woke me Sleep as drug, it took time to shake the heaviness. After a very slow wash brush and dress, I went down to breakfast in a formal room that was paradoxically bright and intimate, with sparkling surfaces of mirrors, silverware and paned glass, lush with velvet upholstered armchairs and dense linen table cloths. The maitre d' gave me what I'm now taking as the Roman once over, an appraisal from my unpedicured toe that shrank in it's sandal to my too red for breakfast lipstick. The appraisal literally involves moving the head and eyes from the feet to the head, illustrating with no apologies the art of "being sized up" (no, not for a coffin, more like a credit check on style, elegance, money). But if that's the price of a marble bathroom, and all the time needed to people watch what was mostly an Italian clientele, then I'm buying. My guide book said something about clothing as an illustration of wealth, and the Italian propensity for conformity. Ack!

Today was about walking around the immediate area; the Spanish steps, villa Medici, the Trevi fountain, People's Place and via Condotti. The weather wasperfect, cool dry and sunny. So I walked up a hill, and down, and up stairs, and down. My heart hurt I'm so out of shape. I ambled blindly, without a map for a couple of hours, just to observe, window shop. I would stop in a cafe, order aqua minerale, and watch some more. I finally broke down and bought a map with the treasure coins Clive gave me. They were really intended for use in automated machines, because they're so pitted from sea water, but after yesterday's ripoff I have no embarrassment in using them with people. Of course map guy wanted to reject them, but a euro is a euro apparently. But not pretty, which is an Italian value. Daniela, at work, used to have a phrase to describe this value, something like "pretty for pretty's sake".

With a map in hand I finally knew how to get back to the hotel. Relief. Actually I didn't need any relief, somewhere between perspiring, walking and drinking, there was no need for the facilities. And anyone who knows me, knows that I like a wc close by at all times, and will avail myself often. But apparently that's only a north American thing, along with 24oz gulpies (no, i don't drink them!). So I walked some more, down those impossibly narrow streets, clinging to a small sliver of sidewalk when the big Smart car drove by. Real people live in these neighborhoods, walking dogs and carrying newspapers. The dogs I've seen are "pretty". No Mexican hairless breeds here, and they've mostly been purebreds; lots of boston terriers, jack russells, two long tail long earred boxers, a tall and lanky bloodhound, a Doberman, labs brown and yellow, a stiff old and grizzled golden retriever. I find it surprising that where there isn't a blade of grass that I could see that there were still dogs, and big ones at that, with mostly the bits still attached. How latin! I missed Edgar.

Stephanie would have gone mad with retail fever on via Condotti! Prada, Hermes, ?Burberry, every name that apparently this morning's matre d' thinks I should know was there. The window dressing was a treat in itself; minked and gilded, handbeaded and thick with luxe. The Italians really do dress beautifully. Men in fabulous suits, the little old lady with the short wool jacket discreetly trimmed wearing flowing palazzo pants bouncing a perfectly cut straight white haired bob, the young girls in tight short sweater dresses with over the knee puss'n boots. Scarves on everyone, wrapped and draped, limp with Colour or precise with architectural detail.

On my way back to the hotel, or lunch, i tripped on some paving stones. I think I've sprained my ankle. I initially was able to hobble off, working out the kink I thought. I stopped for some lunch, and when I got up I couldn't support my weight. I hopped and dragged myself as dignifiedly as I could back to the hotel, which was around the corner. In the past couple of hours, hot and cold compressions later, it's swollen and I can't walk on it. I'm really regretting not having had a pedicure before I left Toronto.

More tomorrow.

Friday & Saturday, traveling from Toronto to Rome 20111014-15

20111015. One slow drive to Pearson in friday night traffic, long lines with gnarly security people, seven hours of grinding flight on a lufthansa flight in an economy class strait jacket that is possibly smaller than what air Canada offers. blinding morning in Frankfurt waiting for a connection, bad coffee breath, offset by the huge cardio benefits of walking five miles across a terminal with a fully loaded knapsack, all while cursing the Italy guide book which was half the load. Another flight, over the alps, along the coast, nodding out, and being startled back to consciousness by dirty stories (with hand and cheek gestures) told in some guttural serbo-Italian dialect accompanied by the loud cackling of a menage of hip middle age Euro chicks. Land. Find the train. Buy the rail ticket into the city. This is Italy. I stumble a bit to get my big bag up the steps of the train, but i easily find a seat, and pick up and understand most of the Italian newspaper. Train leaves the station, out come my big sunglasses. The competent traveller returns. Trying desperately to stay awake. I notice gardens, and every balcony is verdant with vines and leafy things. If a real measure of a city is it's parking lots, I love the disarray of Italian parking, and the clever tucked in spaces where you find them. The closer to the city centre, the crumblier the walls, and remnants of "antiquarian" seem like the norm. Termini station. Instead of clanging my bag down a huge staircase all sweaty like, I find the elevator. Capable me. I glide right out of that train station into the taxi of my first hustler. Handsome, charming. Kind of know it's happening, but I don't want to shark out in my first hour in Rome. I ask the right questions about fares and meters. I wasnt entirely gaga. There are two huge protests in the centre of the city. Riot police are out. Handsome men, strangely with many variations of facial hair. If French police are blue, Italian police are green. Same jackboots, same congregation of men at each corner. Bubble dome riot shields. Same batons The choppers are hovering. Taxi guy will get me to the Majestic. I don't know how he did it, but a 15euro cab ride cost 40euros, and somehow in all the changing of the cash he got 100euros off me. Ack. And he left me a good block from the hotel. And its some hotel, rather MAj
JESTIC. Nice people at the desk. Very helpful. Small room, looking out at garden and a wall. And a marble bathroom, with tub! So if i forgive myself losing 85euros, it's a delicious start. Except I don't know if I can fall asleep now.

Thursday, Toronto. 20111013

I leave tomorrow. Of course I've left the heavy lifting to today. Because I'm a capital P procrastinator. For a couple of days this week I had doubts that I would actually be going, between airport security screener "work to rule" delays, AirCanada strike action and global market meltdowns. So it felt like I might be able to put off the lifting for another few months. But this Italy thing, the trip I've wanted to do and put off for years, cannot be put off any longer. I don't identify myself as a world traveller. Rather, in our time of nauseous volumes of choices and niches, I think it would have been preferable to be a plain and simple person who had never travelled more than a 100km from home. But this Italy thing. I've peaked over the Italian border from France and Switzerland, and sniffed it out over the Mediterranean from North Africa at least five times. Enough is enough, I'm going. I want to see churches and fountains, and eat real gelato. Now. Even if I have to wait at the airport for three days. Even at the financial risk of not putting turkey on the Christmas dinner table. I'm leaving for the airport tomorrow, even if five months of laundry is still sitting in the basement and everything upstairs that has to go downstairs threatens to topple over and block the staircase, irregardless of the basement hoard fire hazard, with or without a planned and posh wardrobe, one toothbrush and a knitting project short, Edgar dogbunnies curled in the corners of every room, the bed unmade, surly customer service reps notwithstanding, traffic on the Gardiner be damned. I'm going. Ready, set, lift.....